Dark Assassin - Anne Perry [125]
When they at last reached the top, Monk held the light to look at the man. The question of who he might be froze on his lips. The stream they had passed through had cleaned off the mud, and he saw the face clearly. It had stared at him in the lantern light of another sewer only two and a half days before. The black hair and brows like a slash across his face, and the narrow-bridged nose were etched in his mind forever. With a shaking hand he touched the lip and pushed it back. There were the extraordinary eyeteeth, one even more prominent than the other. What irony! His hiding place had been the cause of his death! The very stream he had killed to conceal had in turn killed him.
“Oo is ’e?” The tosher looked at Monk, frowning. “I seen ’im somewhere afore, an’ I can’t ’member where it were.”
“He’s a man who killed other people for money,” Monk replied.
“The police are looking for him. I need to find Sergeant Orme. Can you send someone to fetch him? It matters very much.”
The tosher shrugged. “I’ll put out the word,” he promised. “Are you goin’ ter leave ’im ’ere?”
“I’m going to stay with him, at least until the police can take him away,” Monk replied. Suddenly he was aware of the cold, of the numbness of his feet. Would this be in time to make a difference to the trial? It would at least prove that Melisande Ewart had seen a real person. Might that be enough to swing the jury? Or to frighten Argyll?
He waited, crouching in the dark beside the corpse, hearing shouts and seeing lanterns waving in the distance across the rubble. It had started to rain again. The light shone yellow on the faces of the rocks and black pools of water between. The giant machine roared in the mist like some monstrous, half-human creature, still grinding and thumping as more debris was hauled up. Monk was not sure if it was his imagination, but it seemed to be settling deeper into the earth.
It was about half an hour when at last Orme appeared, waving a lantern, Crow on his heels.
“You got ’im?” Orme asked, bending to look at the dead body.
“Yes.” Monk had no doubt at all.
Crow stared at him. His face was lit on one side, and shadowed on the other, but his expression was a mask of anger and scalding contempt.
“Doesn’t look so much dead, does he!” he said quietly. Then he bent down, frowning a little. Experimentally he touched one of the man’s hands, then picked it up. His frown deepened and he looked up at Monk. “You think he was killed in the fall?”
“Yes. His legs are crushed. He was probably trapped.” He was half ashamed as he said it. “I should feel sorry for anyone caught like that, but all I feel for him is angry we can’t make him tell us who paid him. I’d bring him into court, broken legs, broken back, and all.”
“Scuff’ll be all right,” Orme said quietly, looking not at Monk but at Crow. “Won’t ’e?”
“Yes, I should think so,” Crow agreed. “But look at his legs, Mr. Monk.”
“What about them? They’re both broken.”
“See any blood?”
“No. Probably washed off in the water we took him through. I dragged him; he’s heavier than you’d think.”
Crow looked at the body again, more carefully. Orme and Monk watched, growing more curious and then unaccountably concerned.
“Why does it matter?” Monk said finally.
Crow stood up, his legs stiff, moving awkwardly. “Because he was dead before the slide hit him,” he replied. “Dead bodies don’t bleed. The only blood staining anything is on his coat, from the bullet hole in his chest. The river didn’t wash that out.”
Monk found himself shaking even more violently. “You mean he’s been murdered? Surely he’d never have shot himself!”
“Not in the back, anyway,” Crow replied. “Went in under his left shoulder blade, came out the front. I reckon whoever